A number of analytical procedures have been developed in the biochemical art wherein it is required to remove solvent from peptide solutions in order to have a more concentrated peptide sample which can be analyzed effectively, or to remove low molecular weight ions or solutes. Many other analytical procedures, involving not only peptides but macromolecular species in general, also have been developed wherein it is necessary to concentrate and/or "desalt" a macromolecular component in a liquid sample, as there is commonly a need in biochemistry/medicinal chemistry for pure analytes devoid of salts, detergents and other contaminants. The presence of these substances can be deleterious, in that they often interfere with subsequent chemical analyses. Analogous situations exist in the environmental art and in chemical analysis.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,301 discloses a centrifugal method and apparatus for concentrating macromolecules without filtering to dryness. A semipermeable ultrafiltration membrane separates a sample reservoir from a filtrate cup, and filtrate ducts below the membrane are offset sufficiently inward from the edge of the membrane so that when the apparatus is used in a fixed angle centrifuge rotor, filtration stops once the retentate meniscus reaches the centrifugal radial level of the outermost edge of the outermost filtrate duct.
Such ultrafiltration devices are commonly used for the "purification" and/or sample preparation of biomolecules and natural products. For such a process to be successful, a membrane must be selected that retains the molecules of interest, yet passes the impurities. Although this scenario is relatively straightforward for analytes greater than about 10,000 molecular weight, it becomes increasingly problematic for substances less than about 5000 molecular weight. The reason is due to the fact that the required membrane porosity to retain the about 5000 molecular weight analyte is so low that the water permeability (flow rate) becomes poor and processing times too long. For example, a typical centrifugal "spin time" for a device using a membrane suitable for analytes having a molecular weight of 30,000 or more is about one hour, whereas as many as six hours may be required for analytes of about 1000 molecular weight. Furthermore, such long term exposure to high g-forces frequently results in device failure.
The sample quantities now common in the art are in the 0.01 to 10 microgram range. At such low loads, efficient sample handling is crucial to avoid loss. Conventional methods and devices for sample preparation are not practical for handling the "microseparation" of such small sample volumes. In addition, ultrafiltration can only effectively concentrate and desalt, and thus the application of adsorption technology at this scale could offer an entirely new approach to micro-mass sample preparation.
One conventional method for making sample preparation devices is to first insert a precut porous plug obtained from, for example, a fiberous glass or cellulose sheet, into the tip of a pipette, followed by the addition of loose particles and a second porous plug, as illustrated in FIG. 1. The plugs serve to retain the particles in place in the pipette tip. However, the plugs also entrap excess liquid thereby creating dead space or volume (i.e., space not occupied by media or polymer that can lead to poor sample recovery, contamination such as by sample carry-over, etc.). However, these procedures cannot be used with extremely small liquid delivery devices such as pipette tips, as there is no practical way to load either the plug or the particles to obtain a microadsorptive device that contains 10 milligrams or less of adsorbent to be used for the aforementioned extremely small sample loads.
Alternatively, a micro sample preparation device can be made by lodging media in a capillary pipette. However, the flow through such devices is typically slow.
Moreover, although from a mass adsorption standpoint, adsorptive powders offer the highest capacity, they are difficult or indeed impossible to handle in milligram quantities. Although polymer-based adsorptive membrane sheets are relatively easy to handle, their capacity is poor as a result of relatively low substructure surface area.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a sample preparation device which can concentrate, purify and/or desalt molecules from sample solutions.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a sample preparation device which can concentrate, purify and/or desalt molecules from very small sample solutions.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a sample preparation device which can concentrate, purify and/or desalt molecules from sample solutions in a variety of form geometries.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a sample preparation device which can concentrate, purify and/or desalt molecules from very small sample solutions in a variety of form geometries.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a sample preparation device that is simple and economic to manufacture.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a method of casting particles in a housing in a variety of housing sizes or geometries.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a castable membrane that assumes the shape of the housing in which it is cast, and can be retained in that housing without the use of porous plugs.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a castable membrane on a support or substrate.